Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[Slyfeind]

Stuff.

I'm trying to figure out if Thelurker is for real, or if this is a parody of the "disgruntled gamer."

[damijin]

He makes me feel bad for thinking Raph is cool  :-(

I'm gonna go cuddle with my copy of A Theory~

[Nebu]

I don't know how you guys can be so hard on Raph.  Short of being independently wealthy, project leadership involves LOTS OF COMPROMISES.  Compromises required to appease the money people.  Compromises to keep employees on task.  I can't even beging to fathom the number of limitations that get placed on the creative element in any project due to overhead, implementation costs, and deadlines.

[Arthur_Parker]

UO was ahead of it's time, we should have worked up to it, not down from it.  Can I kill and loot people in this new game, pickpocket them, con them?  Doubt it, those things affect other people and we aren't allowed to do that anymore, unless it's in space with excel running.

[Nebu]

UO was ahead of it's time, we should have worked up to it, not down from it.  Can I kill and loot people in this new game, pickpocket them, con them?  Doubt it, those things affect other people and we aren't allowed to do that anymore, unless it's in space with excel running.

This is why I tend to blame the market rather than the developers.  They make games like WoW because that's what the public clammors for.  It's where the money is.  If the general public demanded more, we'd be more likely to get it.  Instead we get newer versions of Deer Hunter. 

[tazelbain]

The word you are looking for is naive.

[El Gallo]

I don't know how you guys can be so hard on Raph.  Short of being independently wealthy, project leadership involves LOTS OF COMPROMISES.  Compromises required to appease the money people.  Compromises to keep employees on task.  I can't even beging to fathom the number of limitations that get placed on the creative element in any project due to overhead, implementation costs, and deadlines.

That's called living in the real world, and it's not an excuse to put out bad product.  I have to compromise all the time at my job; I'm sure most people do.  Yet, if I put out the legal equivalent of SWG, I wouldn't just get fired--I'd get sued for malpractice and possibly disbarred.  

I doubt that "but...but...but I didn't have infinite money or infinite time, and I had to negotiate between various, often-conflicting demands from various factions within the client, other lawyers in my firm, our employees, the judge, etc which forced me to make a number of difficult compromises" would save my bacon.  At least, that wouldn't be my lead argument before the discipline committee  

[Nebu]

That's called living in the real world, and it's not an excuse to put out bad product.  I have to compromise all the time at my job; I'm sure most people do.  Yet, if I put out the legal equivalent of SWG, I wouldn't just get fired--I'd get sued for malpractice and possibly disbarred.  

Several hundred thousand people bought the product and were empowered with the ability to cancel rather than bitch.  Let's not forget that the MMOG community tends to make themselves into victims rather than pull the plug and vote with their wallet.  I think that there was some good to come out of SWG.  Sadly, there was also a lot of bad.  In science we also learn more from our failures than successes.  The major difference is that games are funded by consumers rather than taxpayers. 

There's also a HUGE difference between a bad product and a product that doesn't live up to expectations.  Horizons = bad product. 

Think of all the games that you've paid $50 for and ask if SWG was really that much worse than all of them.  If you're goign to deify someone for putting out a shitty product, I think there are scores of people on the list above Raph.

[Strazos]

If I had bought SWG, it would have been one of the top 2 or 3 worst games I own.

[Nebu]

I lasted longer in SWG and AO than I did in WoW. 

I'm guessing I'm not the norm.

[Margalis]

I played WOW for a week and a half. Raph may has had his ups and downs but I at least want to *try* whatever he comes out with.

[Soln]

They are the Bizarro F13.

I guess between Vanguard, Green Monster Games,  Dark&Light and/or Darkfall and/or Horizons, they have all parked themselves at the feet of FoH at one time or another.  Anyone check the C0mbine.net? (avoiding Google Alerts).


For the record, those are a lot of sentences.  More than I've ever seen from any redname on F13.

If it's reputation creation with average users those words might have been more influential on Penny Arcade.  More of them.  But I don't get how a raiding guild == casual web users.

[Cheddar]

UO was 1997. You are right, it doesnt count any more. Great game it was, but 10 years ago. It's a new MMO world. Also you weren't the only one to work on it. Don't claim individual credit for a team project.

SWG sucked. Nuff said there.

Taking credit for the good of a project is easy, even when there is very little good there. If you are going to be the one to step out in the limelight and pimp yourself all the time, then you should be willing to take the negative hits as well. So yes, it IS your fault for the bad things in those games. Or is it just the good things that you touched?

Does Raph have experience? Sure! Has he worked on games that still exist? Sure!

Now take all of this self professed experience and knowledge and make something that doesnt suck. All without so much self-fluffing that you seem to do on fanboi forums. I'll be tickled pink if you ship something decent. I'm doubtful as hell, but I'll be glad.

UO is not only still online, it is turning a profit.  That is NOT so yesterday, it is cold hard fact. 

Your blatant trolling and naive attitude suggest you need to work on critical thinking. 

[Slyfeind]

Several hundred thousand people bought the product and were empowered with the ability to cancel rather than bitch.  Let's not forget that the MMOG community tends to make themselves into victims rather than pull the plug and vote with their wallet.

That continues to boggle my mind. In all other businesses, if a consumer is unhappy with a product, they discontinue use of that product. However, in this one very specific market -- not just games, not just video games, but massive multiplayer online role playing games -- customers will pay monthly fees for years, to a company they have no confidence in, for a product they do not enjoy.

There will always be people like Thelurker who buy things they don't want. Ask them why they do it, and they just get upset, swear at you, call you names, then go back to drinking their proverbial sour milk -- despite the literally thousands of other offerings.

[Akkori]

Hey Raph, while you are working on the new project, make a secret alt account and give up the goods on the behind-the-scenes stuff that screwed up SWG. Come on.... you *know* you wanna do it. F13 needs another 100-page thread, and only SWG can deliver that.

[geldonyetich]

One can dream.

Anywho, I think Raph and team can make a pretty good virtual world, and it'll be enjoyed all the more without having the Star Wars license skew everybody's expectations.  In other words, I think SWG would have been much better received if people weren't expecting Star Wars.  Hey, we have nary a bad thing to say about ATITD and it's like another SWG in many ways.  (Of course, it's also not anything like SWG in many other ways.)

[Typhon]

[stop talking and start making!]

UO is not only still online, it is turning a profit.  That is NOT so yesterday, it is cold hard fact. 

Your blatant trolling and naive attitude suggest you need to work on critical thinking. 

I think your like for Raph is distorting your critical analysis of TehLurker's post (if he had been funnier, he would have called himself "TehLurker"... cause it's funny dammit!).  It's hard-hitting.  It's angry.  It's also alittle unfair (I don't recall ever reading Raph claiming sole credit for UO, or only the good parts of SWG).  I wouldn't describe it as a troll.  He's saying, "it's time to stop talking and start delivering".  How is that not in the spirit of f13?  Just because you disagree with him, or think he's being overly critical, doesn't de facto make it a troll post.

I personally hope that Raph and Co produce the next robot Jesus, if only for the selfish reason that I'd like to play something substantially new or compelling.  I'd be happy if I simply found it fun.  But, like every new thing claiming that it's going to be "disruptive" I'll believe it when I see it.

Nebu: Big Tobacco is a business that has a large number of unhappy customers.  I'd say the gambling industry also has a fairly large number of customers that are less then satisfied.  A bit creepy to think that the MMO industry is in that league, now that I mention it.  (note: I'm not claiming that MMO games are addictive)

[Cheddar]

<words>

It grates me because the attack was unfounded and asanine.  Schild did a much better job of throwing down the gauntlet. 

All Raph did was form a company.  Sheesh.

[Venkman]

Darniaq,

Most people who fail don't go around telling people how to make games and how we're in the wrong mindset and write books about it. I'm not saying Raph is a failure. I'm just saying that up until Right Now he's been all barK and no bite. So when I say it's put up or shutup time - that's where I'm coming from.

I get that. And I don't mean to belabor the point. But I do think it important I'm clear.

There's two parts to SWG: what it was supposed to be and what it turned out to be. Vision and Execution. Most of what was wrong was Execution. Now, I do think the Vision was niche in concept, but it's the Execution that was the major cf, and Raph had little to do with that part directly.

Some would think that's splitting hairs, but in this industry it's actually very important. You've got vision people, effective team builders, effective team managers, and then the people doing the work (among other things). Every person in this industry may fall into one or maybe two of those roles at any given time. The projects are too big in scope. In regards to SWG, Raph was one of the "vision people", and maybe some of the team manager. But he was not the one doing the work. And that is where SWG failed most.

The part I completely agree with you on though is the "put up" time, just for a different reason. It's now "put up" with Vision. Is Areae, something he can almost totally control, actually right for the genre, for the industry, for the players? Is it truly the culmination of visions explained on every forum, many blogs, and in various forms of print?

Basically: is he right?

That is what this is about in my opinion. It's not about delivering a single game. It's about building a functional proof of a long-building vision, and assessing whether it is right.

[Slyfeind]

I think your like for Raph is distorting your critical analysis of TehLurker's post (if he had been funnier, he would have called himself "TehLurker"... cause it's funny dammit!).  It's hard-hitting.  It's angry.  It's also alittle unfair (I don't recall ever reading Raph claiming sole credit for UO, or only the good parts of SWG).  I wouldn't describe it as a troll.  He's saying, "it's time to stop talking and start delivering".  How is that not in the spirit of f13?  Just because you disagree with him, or think he's being overly critical, doesn't de facto make it a troll post.

I'm just curious what the hell he has to be so angry about. "Stop talking and start delivering?" That's not something people get upset about. That's just an angle to get his real gripe out there. He played a game, didn't like it, and now what? Years later, he's chasing Raph all over the Internet and screaming about how much he didn't like SWG. I don't like DAOC anymore, but I'm not bitching at Lum about it. I'm just not playing it.

Big Tobacco is a business that has a large number of unhappy customers.  I'd say the gambling industry also has a fairly large number of customers that are less then satisfied.  A bit creepy to think that the MMO industry is in that league, now that I mention it.  (note: I'm not claiming that MMO games are addictive)

I dunno, back when I used to smoke, I was very happy with whoever made the cigarettes!  :-D

[Sir Fodder]

I'm just hoping Areae doesn't pull a Tabula Rasa. I hate Burger King, I hate everything, and I need a new game to play. Raph, how about pumping out a quick and dirty proof of concept game with sketch pad artwork?

[Azazel]

You can call me a fanboi, but I think if anyone is currently poised to pull in the 6 million sub market it is Areola, or whatever name it is.  In 2 years (tops, depending on how streamlined the dev cycle is). 

Thanks an awfully big handjob to give someone who hasn't actually shown anything of note this time around and presides over a right royal clusterfuck last time. Sorry, I'm a big Star Wars fan, and so are a bunch of my EQ-WoW-playing mates, so I should have been hooked, not repulsed by what SWG turned out to be. WUA as well for that matter, and how many millions more. This time, he's ..making a game. Of some sort. It could be great, or it could be shit-awful. But not knowing anything about it (and I'll assume neither do you), leads me to my next question..

Where did you guesstimate 6m from? WoW minus a little bit? Think back to a couple of years ago before WoW ate everyone's lunch at once. 500k was a huge sub number, and while WoW had grown the marketplace etc etc, 6m seems like an unfeasably large number to pull out of a hat based on, you know, nothing. For that matter, WoWs 7.5m sub numbers include the o/s markets like China and Korea. Making a 6m prediction even more drooling-fanboi-esque.

Also, I agree with Ironwood.

edit - Not sure, but I get the feeling that TheLurker is a regular f13 poster of some sort. Not anyone specific, but it's just a feeling I have. IPs are easy enough to change, after all.

[WindupAtheist]

I have a love/hate relationship with Raph.  On one hand, he was behind Ultima Online.  (UO forevar!)  On the other hand, he fucked around endlessly playing social engineer while pLaTeDeWd & B0N3D00D raped the game for fethers and drove it's reputation into the shitter.

Then he made SWG which...  Look, I won't belabor the failings of SWG for the billionth time, but I'm the resident Star Wars and Ultima Online fanboy.  Forget everything else.  If you make a Star Wars virtual world MMO and you never manage to land me as a customer, you have god damn failed.

So now he's doing... something.  We don't know what.  I don't care.  I'll give it a look when there's something to be seen.  If Raph has learned his lessons, he has the potential to turn out a SWG/UO virtual world that actually works from the ground up, which would be fucking awesome.  If he hasn't, it's just going to be another chunk of shit we make million-page "What went wrong?" threads about.

Has he learned his lessons?  I don't know.  But put me firmly in the "Oh fuck Bartle and all that old MUD shit already!" camp.

[Endie]

edit - Not sure, but I get the feeling that TheLurker is a regular f13 poster of some sort. Not anyone specific, but it's just a feeling I have. IPs are easy enough to change, after all.

I totally agree: I think it's been pretty clear since the first post that you're right about that.  Frankly, while there's a place for alt-posting (to be funny, usually), doing it to flame individuals isn't it.

My own, very personal, view is that I'd rather we stuck to the usefully cynical commentary.

[voblat]

There's two parts to SWG: what it was supposed to be and what it turned out to be. Vision and Execution. Most of what was wrong was Execution. Now, I do think the Vision was niche in concept, but it's the Execution that was the major cf, and Raph had little to do with that part directly.

I disagree with you here on swg , because you cannot honestly , as a player , know the distinction between vision and execution on the release version of swg.

It was broken in so many ways , I would be interested to know how you could tell which bits were broken by idea, and which by implimentation.

Take HAM for instance , a mind pool that can kill and is relatively unhealable, and is attackable only by a small portion of professions in an ostensibly open PvP game (with the 'overt' status caveat) was a terrible system. Raph has said the whole HAM system didnt work as per his original design, so I assume you will chalk that to 'execution'.

However, one would be able to make the reasonable assumption he signed off on the redesign, even if he didnt formulate the idea himself, so it could be just as fair to say that was beoken at the idea stage.

Im not a 'hateboi' of raph, despite its problems my guild had fun in SWG , it certainly created a community feeling within the game much better than anything that has come since, in my opinion, which for a game genre based on player interaction, is probably the one thing that should be taken from SWG as a success.

Raph has made games that were fun to some, not liked by others, thats it.
I dont get either side of the coin, the hero worship or the outright hatred that seems to fly towards him.

Like his games, play them.

Dont like his games, dont play them .

I guess that is too complicated for some of his stalkers.

[schild]

Hate....boi?

[Arthur_Parker]

I have a love/hate relationship with Raph.  On one hand, he was behind Ultima Online.  (UO forevar!)  On the other hand, he fucked around endlessly playing social engineer while pLaTeDeWd & B0N3D00D raped the game for fethers and drove it's reputation into the shitter.

Ronnie threw a party for the rich kids once.  There were hookers, drug dealers, alcohol and weapons, it was crazy.  He didn't make a point of inviting the serial killers but they turned up anyway.  A few hours later the police find the survivors barricaded in the bathroom.

Ronnie got out on parole, but even now years later people still ask him when his next party is.  They say all the parties in town are real strict and boring but even so, to this day every bathroom in town has a lockable steal door.

[voblat]

Hate....boi?

The word 'fanboi' was in my mind as it had been used already in this thread, I was trying to keep with the general tone.

It was probably a mistake. 

[tkinnun0]

There's two parts to SWG: what it was supposed to be and what it turned out to be. Vision and Execution. Most of what was wrong was Execution. Now, I do think the Vision was niche in concept, but it's the Execution that was the major cf, and Raph had little to do with that part directly.

A Star Wars world to live in, where you can't be a Jedi. There's no Execution that can fix that.

Basically: is he right?

That is what this is about in my opinion. It's not about delivering a single game. It's about building a functional proof of a long-building vision, and assessing whether it is right.

How do you propose we measure that? If it isn't an unquestionable success like WoW or failure like Ryzom, you can always copout by saying it is niche.

[Ironwood]

<words>

It grates me because the attack was unfounded and asanine.  Schild did a much better job of throwing down the gauntlet. 

All Raph did was form a company.  Sheesh.

I think that was my point too.   

[Venkman]

I disagree with you here on swg , because you cannot honestly , as a player , know the distinction between vision and execution on the release version of swg.

Actually, I do. As do lots of other people. Because the vision was explained ad nauseum, both before and after launch, by Raph, by others, to explain, to justify, to retain. It is almost entirely due to that vision that the people who were there at launch held onto the game for so long. It certainly wasn't the execution. Nobody believed the game was going to function perfectly. We all believed in what it was trying to be though... until we started realizing it was impossible given all circumstances involved. And that happened before JTL, and after Raph was no longer directly involved with the game.

You can argue the vision if you disagree with it, because it's pretty well described out there. It's the execution that has been the problem (HAM as delivered, not promised. Jedi as delivered, not promised. Systems that couldn't survive emergent behavior, etc).

How do you propose we measure that?

You can't yet.

We don't know anything about Areae. Every argument for or against it is stupid because of that one fact. How do we know he's not trying to create something entirely different? No, I don't mean "entirely different" in the "now Stamina means mana", or the "hey, Mages can dual wield daggers, wow that's innovative" sorta ways. I mean marketplaces that don't exist yet because nobody's doing anything of the like. Or, even marketplaces that currently exist and are successful but unknown to folks who'd rather jump all over him for decisions he made half a decade or a decade and a half ago.

[schild]

Actually, we know a lot about Areae. I don't want to get into it, but from Raph's book, his ramblings about social spaces, and his grassroots campaign for both employees and press - well, you can read into it.

Here's to hoping he doesn't have an official forum. Man, that would be a fucking mistake. Between his supporters and the people who will register just to talk about SW:G, whew, I wouldn't want to set foot in there. It's bad enough that every time crafting, economics, or Raph gets mentioned ANYWHERE (including here), the thread becomes Just Another SWG thread. I suppose it's unavoidable though.

[Strazos]

I disagree with you here on swg , because you cannot honestly , as a player , know the distinction between vision and execution on the release version of swg.

That is entirely irrelevant. You don't pay to play a vision - you pay to play the damn game. Execution is all that matters, because that is all you have direct contact with.

If I am making a game that is supposed to have hit placement because you can direct your attacks with your movement and the mouse, but I end up just putting auto-attack in the actual game, my previous little idea means all of nothing.

Ideas mean nothing for a game, if they only remain ideas.

EDIT: Heh, it's early.

[Ironwood]

Wurd.

What continues to taunt me is that I have yet to see an idea that Raph has talked about actually succesfully and properly implemented in a game.

I find the idea of a guy who came up with HAM touting the KISS methodology to be high, high comedy.  And that's not even going into outcasting.

[Venkman]

That is an important point Ironwood. He may be wrongly blamed for the crappy code of SWG, but there's still the question of whether his vision is right, and whether executing that vision is even feasible.

Actually, we know a lot about Areae. I don't want to get into it, but from Raph's book, his ramblings about social spaces, and his grassroots campaign for both employees and press - well, you can read into it.

That just shows what he thinks should be done. It doesn't show anything about what he's actually doing, because the only way to pull from those things such insights is to extrapolate into guesswork.

It's a quibble, yea. But you can't build something on a dream. That can only get you started.